A Family Portrait – Collection of Short Stories Zimbabwe

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Tsitsi Dangarembga (Ed.): A Family Portrait – Collection of Short Stories Zimbabwe

While it is believed that a boy whose father abuses his wife is likely to be a wife beater in the future, might it not also be true that the same child is likely to be a bully at school and accept and participate in violence in his adult life? Does it also not come to the fact that a group of such children will create a violent society and a society that takes violence as a norm?

Is it not also true that trend leaders change society? When leaders in their different spheres (religious, political and social) allow and harbor violent and abusive behaviors will they not create a society of violent behavior and allow violence to be tolerated? Is it not in the same breath that violence becomes sacred and is elevated to a taboo? Is it not also that once it becomes sacred as a society we have internalized it and it creates a cycle?

Zimbabwe has a history of violence in different spheres: social, religious and political. We must break the cycle of violence by demystifying it and this can only be done if it is dragged into the public.